SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Review - Rehydrated

Who lives at the bottom of the ocean!?

I dare to assume that many of our readers at least once in their lives dreamed of returning to childhood: until late at night walking on the street with friends, teasing harmful neighbors with constant doorbells, and, of course, watching your favorite cartoons. Chained to large, in our opinion at that time, televisions, we could spend many hours at the screens of these "fat men", and for good reason - childhood cartoons were so wonderful that they are still imprinted not only in our memory, but also in our hearts. For the vast majority of children of that time, one of these was a cartoon about a funny yellow Sponge named Bob. Do you know why I'm so sure of this? Try to sing the phrase “ Who lives at the bottom of the ocean !?” in the circle of your friends!? ".

The SpongeBob universe game was born back in the early 2000s, but not many of us had the opportunity to play it on a second curling iron, or even on a PC (although these two versions were largely different from each other). And now, sixteen years after the release, in 2019, THQ Nordic, together with the new Austrian game studio Purple Lamp Studios, announces a remaster of this very game.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated , like overwhelming pain?The institution of platform games is built on the search and collecting of various items and coins. The game consists of more than ten large locations, which in turn are divided into several levels. Progression in the story directly depends on collecting various items that we mentioned. Those players who have watched a cartoon about SpongeBob at least once in their lives know that he cooks Krabby Patties very well - a local dish that is served only at the Krusty Krabs. The gameplay does not involve cooking such a dish, but by and large you will need to find as many golden spatulas as possible, with which SpongeBob cooks Krabby Patties. After collecting a certain number of blades, the player gets access to new locations and challenges.

The plot of the game has not changed much: the robots rebelled against their master and began to riot in a town called Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob needs to stop this lawlessness, but it's not easy to do it alone, so he takes his comrades with him - Patrick and Sandy. All characters in the game have unique abilities, so the player will often have to switch between them right in the middle of the location. By the way, especially for suchIn the game, a "bus stop" is implemented, after interacting with which another character will appear on the screen.

As we have already noted, the playable characters have their own skills: SpongeBob can break objects with his head that are above him, Patrick picks up heavy objects and throws them, and Sandy uses a lasso to climb into hard-to-reach areas, as well as hover in the air. Based on this, during the game, SpongeBob gets levels with small puzzles in the spirit of “press the button”, Patrick will also often have to press buttons, but only by throwing objects at them, and Sandy will become available in locations with hills, where you can completely reveal her skills.

The gameplay of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated offers interesting platform sections that flow one into the other. At first it may seem that in these large locations the player has freedom of choice, but in fact there are quite a few non-linear forks, and the above-described abilities of the characters can only be used where it was intended by the developers. For example, in certain places of locations you can meet game characters: Mr. Krabs, Mrs. Puff and others who havex you can take the next task. If you talk to such an NPC controlled by a different character who can pass the level, the quest will simply not be active, and the “quest giver” itself will ask you to look at him with the right character.

In addition to the game mechanics described above, as you progress through the game, you will also encounter peculiar "races" in which only SpongeBob can take part. Some of them are not very difficult, while others, on the contrary, are quite difficult. Just rolling forward will not work, because throughout the entire route you will find various obstacles, as well as interesting "cuts", only with the help of which you can win the race.

To tell the truth, having gone through the whole game, it seemed to us that it was far from being made for children. If at the beginning of the passage the gameplay proceeds quite smoothly, and in some places even dull, then closer to the middle the complexity of the game increases markedly, not to mention the finale. This difficulty lies not in a large number of enemies, but in the search for those very “golden blades” that are incomprehensibleare scattered throughout the locations. You will find some of them without any difficulties, but for others you will have to fight with logic and reason: it is enough to miss one turn, or not notice the button, and you will wander around the map for a long time in search of a passage to the last collectible item.

Despite the lack of graphics settings, the picture in the game is very pleasant and colorful, as well as the soothing musical accompaniment. Management can be called convenient, because in the whole game I never threw the gamepad at the wall, as it happened more than once with other games in this genre. Well, in general, the game looks good, but I have only one question - was it worth restarting the sixteen-year-old project in 2020, or maybe it would be better to do something new? Of course, the vast majority of players have not seen the original, and now SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated is by and large designed for children of the current generation. If you have children and you want to please them or entertain them on summer evenings, then in addition to interesting books, be sure to buy them this game. As a last resort, you can always play it yourself .